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Josh's Reviews > Beggars in Spain
Beggars in Spain (Sleepless, #1)
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My first sci-fi of the year and my first 5 star, Beggars in Spain is an absolute gem of a book. I've had this on my TBR for at least 10 years since it was highly recommend by a friend and I can't believe it took me this long to get around to it. For me, this is what sci-fi is about: Taking a great idea, in this case, gene modification, and see how it makes and breaks us humans.
Nancy Kress definitely has her finger on the pulse of modern society. The conflicts and divisions that arose between people over the events in the book have a lot of parallels to current global political situations, even today, 30+ years after this was written. She even kind of predicted media platforms like Tik Tok (in the 2090s, people primarily consume their media in two minute videos, due to their shorter attention spans. She apparently thought too highly of us, because that attention span is down to 60 seconds in the 2020s.)
I found all of her characters and their motivations to be highly realistic and just great characters to boot. I will be thinking about Leisha, Alice, Drew, Mira and Jennifer for a long time. Leisha and her sister Alice's story was both heartbreaking and heartwarming, which I knew it would be since the vert first pages when you find out one twin will have the Sleepless gene and the other will not. And Jennifer, as much as I loved to hate her, could never quite sink to the level of evil for me, because I could always understand her line of reasoning, even if I didn't agree with it.
My only criticism, which I quickly forgot about as the book progressed, was that you can clearly see the point where the initial novella ended before it later got fixed into a full novel. Because of the generational span of the book and the time jumps, it definitely had that fix-up novel feeling and that ALMOST kept me from calling this a 5-star, but not quite. That occasional disjointedness didn't prevent me from absolutely loving this.
Time to find out how much I love the rest of her work.
5/5
Nancy Kress definitely has her finger on the pulse of modern society. The conflicts and divisions that arose between people over the events in the book have a lot of parallels to current global political situations, even today, 30+ years after this was written. She even kind of predicted media platforms like Tik Tok (in the 2090s, people primarily consume their media in two minute videos, due to their shorter attention spans. She apparently thought too highly of us, because that attention span is down to 60 seconds in the 2020s.)
I found all of her characters and their motivations to be highly realistic and just great characters to boot. I will be thinking about Leisha, Alice, Drew, Mira and Jennifer for a long time. Leisha and her sister Alice's story was both heartbreaking and heartwarming, which I knew it would be since the vert first pages when you find out one twin will have the Sleepless gene and the other will not. And Jennifer, as much as I loved to hate her, could never quite sink to the level of evil for me, because I could always understand her line of reasoning, even if I didn't agree with it.
My only criticism, which I quickly forgot about as the book progressed, was that you can clearly see the point where the initial novella ended before it later got fixed into a full novel. Because of the generational span of the book and the time jumps, it definitely had that fix-up novel feeling and that ALMOST kept me from calling this a 5-star, but not quite. That occasional disjointedness didn't prevent me from absolutely loving this.
Time to find out how much I love the rest of her work.
5/5
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